Well, doesn’t the Harappan civilization make a mess out of all this? Tin was nearby, and there’s evidence of bronze artifacts in all kinds of houses across the cities, and in general less evidence of hierarchical power, and certainly nothing like the concentration you see in other Bronze Age civilizations. We don’t have the civilization surviving as is to the Iron Age, because it depopulated before iron smelting became common. But it’s odd to make the claim bronze had to lead to stratified societies. Clearly, not always.
> Tin was nearby, and there’s evidence of bronze artifacts in all kinds of houses across the cities, and in general less evidence of hierarchical power, and certainly nothing like the concentration you see in other Bronze Age civilizations.
It seems you didn't read the article carefully. The author says that bronze age empires derived their power from the scarcity of tin, which they could obtain via trade routes, but was hard to get hold of for smaller rulers. In your example this scarcity doesn't hold because tin happened to be nearby. So your example is perfectly compatible with his theory.
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It seems you didn't read the article carefully. The author says that bronze age empires derived their power from the scarcity of tin, which they could obtain via trade routes, but was hard to get hold of for smaller rulers. In your example this scarcity doesn't hold because tin happened to be nearby. So your example is perfectly compatible with his theory.